Distraction Quotes & Sayings

It's never too late to tell a good story, to create a new myth that rouses us from our intoxicated slumber, that lifts us above the din of confusion and arms us against the weapons of mass distraction. — Derek Rydall

Distraction is your friend. — Susane Colasanti

I don't really mind not being a part of a film - because if there is no part for me, I will never force myself upon a film. I feel like it's just a distraction. If it is not organically incorporated into the story, it just feels like a stupid appearance, like a sort of wink. I hate that. — Xavier Dolan

If you want to stop someone from remembering something, the key is to use distraction. — Kevin Dutton

It is better to say one Our Father fervently and devoutly than a thousand with no devotion and full of distraction. — Edmund The Martyr

You get a sense of reference there. You feel part of something that's got order and balance and harmony to it. All the distraction and noise, all the confusion of misplaced, misdirected energy just don't happen there. — Harrison Ford

I was the sibling that kind of kept it all on a level when life at home got tough. I did it through comedy, sarcasm and distraction. All families are complicated, but my home life was glaringly uncomfortable much of the time, and it was me that took the onus. — Johnny Galecki

To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. ("The Medusa") — Thomas Ligotti

I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I went to sleep. Without distraction I would have the same thing going round and round in my mind.
(Recalling the degree of focus and determination that eventually yielded the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.) — Andrew John Wiles

collectivity, on the other hand, is the place of what the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal calls "divertissement," an untranslatable word which roughly means "distraction" or "diversion": It is the escape from life's problems, and also its invitations, into activities that in ultimate terms are meaningless. It is a constant turning to superficial actions as a way to avoid facing the true realities of human life. The soap operas and situation comedies easily become an addiction. They take the place of the "bread and circuses" of ancient Rome. There was plenty wrong with Roman society and the Roman emperors offered the diversion of food and entertainment to make people forget the banality and meaninglessness of the lives they lived. Our society does much the same and has ever so much more in the way of sophisticated tools for doing so. — William H. Shannon

Rituals and celebrations help kids feel connected and valued. This is where the rubber meets the road in terms of "quality time." If parents make an effort to create traditions, and then routinely, reliably practice those traditions, they are sending a message very loudly that their kids aren't just a bothersome distraction from plowing through the to-do list but are the central focus of life. — Meg Cox

He closed the laptop. A sure sign I was about to receive his full attention. — Ransom Riggs

I presume my work has also always been about reduction without any distraction or after effects, outside emotions, or intimacy or complicity with the subject ... — Hedi Slimane

With all of the visual distraction constantly inundating us in the form of our devices and screens, I really derive a great deal of pleasure from watching the sun rise and set, admiring clouds as they change shape across the sky, watching tree leaves and blossoms undulate in the breeze ... these treats foment an ocular-cleansing refreshment to my way of thinking. — Nick Offerman

Sometimes the imagination could be even crueler than the bone saw. — Robert Kurson

I don't want this to be a distraction. This has been distracting enough. I'm not going to rehash this going forward. I'm sure other people are going to have questions about it, but we've got a big season coming up. — Jayson Werth

It comes in many forms. Idly dreaming about the future. Plotting our revenge. Finding refuge in distraction. Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. We'd rather do basically anything else. — Ryan Holiday

Stay focused, ignore the distractions, and you will accomplish your goals much faster. — Joel Osteen

There came a time in everyone's life when they realized that in spite of how hard they'd been running from themselves, everywhere they went, there they were: Addictions and compulsions were nothing but marching bands of distraction, masking truths that were unpleasant, but ultimately undeniable. — J.R. Ward

..the good life warrants an ongoing struggle to be clear about what's important, and to seek it with lucidity and passion; not to be distracted by false ambitions, or waylaid by dissipated conscious — Damon Young

Talking on a landline with no interruptions used to be an everyday thing. Now it's exotic; the jewel in the crown. — Sherry Turkle

When was the last time you looked at anything, solely, and concentratedly, and for its own sake? Ordinary life passes in a near blur. If we go to the theatre or the cinema, the images before us change constantly, and there is the distraction of language. Our loved ones are so well known to us that there is no need to look at them, and one of the gentle jokes of married life is that we do not. — Jeanette Winterson

Answered his knock with a smile, a short one forced through because she was at heart a warm person, not given to the dark mood swings which now plagued her. — John Grisham

Like all great readers, he could create for himself a "wall of stillness". — Philip Zaleski

Paying attention at every moment, forms a new relationship to time. In some magical way, by slowing down, you become more efficient, productive, and energetic, focusing without distraction directly on the task in front of you. Not only do you become immersed in the moment, you become that moment. — Michael Ray

Adoration drives obedience, but throughout history people are prone to forget the faithfulness of God yesterday. — Matt Chandler

We go to the movies to forget about time, to be in a dream state. And it's entertainment, distraction, from the fact that everything is kind of crumbling in front of our eyes. — Christian Marclay

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led. — Matt Roper

Listening without bias or distraction is the greatest value you can pay another person. — Denis Waitley

Loving music had pushed all of us off the track- away from the normal pursuit of career, mate, and family, on an endless quest for that vibrating high, the plunge beyond time that comes only when you submerge yourself beneath the waterline of amplified sound. We were addicts, in a way, but also adept, enlightened by a noise most people considered no more than a pleasant distraction. What was left for us but to practice our art of listening? — Ann Powers

True transformation occurs only when we can look at ourselves squarely and face our attachments and inner demons, free from the buzz of commercial distraction and false social realities. We have to retreat into our own cocoons and come face-to-face with who we are. We have to turn toward our own inner darkness. For only by abandoning its attachments and facing the darkness does the caterpillar's body begin to spread out and its light, beautiful wings begin to form. — Julia Hill

The greatest moments of creativity come in absolute solitude, when one's mind is free from distraction and able to probe the depths of the impossible. — Fennel Hudson

Your calling is important, regardless of its status or other people's opinion — Sunday Adelaja

Until my ONE thing is done, everything else is a distraction. — Gary W. Keller

Move along," Hines said. "Last room down."
I spotted a fish tank halfway down the aisle. Dug into my pocket.
"Hi," I whispered. "Distraction in five. Four. Three ... "
I broke off as we neared the tank.
Hi spun. "Yo, warden. When do we eat around here? I'm hypoglycemic, plus I've got a hernia. And rabies simplex D. Basically, I need a ton of pills or my arms will fall off."
"Boy, you're on my last nerve."
As Hines glared at Hiram, I palmed the flash drive and dumped it into the fish tank. The yellow-and-black rectangle tumbled to the bottom.
So long, friend. Let's hope Shelton's email went through.
"It's a cultural thing," Hi was saying. "I think you're being very insensitive."
Hines snorted. "Do you want me to cuff you?"
"Kinda."
"Hi." I nodded. — Kathy Reichs

Let us endeavor to commence every enterprise with a pure view to the glory of God, continue it without distraction, and finish it without impatience. — Francois Fenelon

Distraction and procrastination come in a variety of flavors ... when I'm distracted and I walk over and stare out the window, it's a very different experience than when I feed the distraction by cramming in a few emails or make a phone call. — Linda Stone

Energies expended on sideshows, never on the main event. Where the hell was the main event? Was there a main event? — Haruki Murakami

I need a distraction. — Colleen Hoover

And we offer each other words of consolation or distraction or encouragement when we see that one or the other of us is in need of such words. We also miss each other (vaguely) when we're not together, she's one of those people (in everyone's life there are four or five such people whose loss one truly feels) to whom you're used to telling everything that happens to you, that is, one of those people you think about when something happens to you, be it funny or dramatic, and for whom you store up events and anecdotes. You accept misfortunes gladly because you know you can tell those five people about them afterwards. — Javier Marias

You just got to be #patient, be focused, you know there are lots of distractions out there. — Tiger Woods

Television news is akin to audible wallpaper. — George F. Will

I think, on both sides of the camera or the novel: Distraction. I'm obsessed with: Can I get this actress or my third act to work? I'm distracted. I'm interested in that so I don't sit home and think, "Gee, life is meaningless. We're all going to die. The universe is pulling apart at breakneck speed." — Woody Allen

The ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one. — Walter Benjamin

A kind soul knows impoliteness is just preoccupied with distraction. — Michael Dolan

What are we all looking for? Happiness? One knows that doesn't last. Distraction, perhaps distraction from the ugly facts: that there is death, there is disease, there is impotence and senility ahead — David Lodge

A long list. From getting cut from the high school basketball team, to getting fired from jobs, getting credit cards rejected and cut up. Rejection has only been a distraction, not a roadblock. "Every no gets me closer to a yes," was the saying I used to use. — Mark Cuban

Now I will have less distraction. — Leonhard Euler

I love New York. I was sad, depressed and incredibly moved by our fellow countrymen and what they've done. I wanted to give people a chance to see something funny, have a distraction. — Ben Stiller

If the desire to have children is just a way to build some noisy tribe of distraction around oneself, then I'd rather be alone. — Meghan Daum

Persist and resist". Persist in your efforts. Resist giving into distraction, discouragement, and disorder. - Epictetus — Ryan Holiday

We all lead double lives. It's a privilege for the artist and a curse for the ordinary man. One has to get used to it."
"It's a terrible thing to know too much. In life, our words are improvisations and our actions careless mistakes that end up by becoming habits. Fate beign the distraction of the gods, I distract myself by evading questions that I never asked myself in the past. We are in the hands of the improbable, are we not, my dear Cosette?"
- Monsieur Verjat- — Victor Hugo

So I am your distraction?"
"You," He said,his face coming within inches of mine, " Are my only hope. — Rebecca Maizel

It's more common for the students I've worked with to read too much than to read too little. They use reading as a distraction, or as a way to avoid having to think their own thoughts, or as a magic charm: "If I read everything in the field, then I'll be able to write and be sure I haven't missed anything. — Joan Bolker

Samuel FB Morse's SECOND question over the telegraph was, "Have you any news? — Harold Holzer

There are two types of 'busy': 1)
Constantly distracting yourself from what is true. 2) Constantly working to create something real. — Oli Anderson

Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself. — Marilyn Vos Savant

I need distractions. Good distractions, not bad ones. A good distraction for me is a great play. — Danny Aiello

Our moral frailty is a strange consolation. — Jen Pollock Michel

Ellington Feint was a line in my mind running right down the middle of my life, separating the formal training of my childhood and the territory of the rest of my days. She was an axis, and at that moment and for many moments afterward, my entire world revolved around her. — Lemony Snicket

Once you understand that someone has Tourette and that they can't help their tics, it takes away the distraction. And you can engage your compassion. You feel for them. You embrace them. — Dylan McDermott

Though you can get smart from reading everything that a smart person writes, you cannot get famous from reading about everything that a famous person does or is said to have done. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us. — Witold Gombrowicz

The concept of a writer writing a vivid and accurate scene in a language transparent and devoid of decoration so that we see through to the object without writerly distraction suffers the same contradiction as the concept of a painter painting a vivid and accurate scene with pigments transparent and devoid of color, including white and black - so that the paint will not get between us and the picture. — Samuel R. Delany

She feared that she would become a slave to superficial, symbolic duties. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I got into trouble a lot in school. They say you're a disturbance in class. You're a distraction, they're moving you around. You never really get rewarded in class for being funny. You're a disturbance. But the funny kid is often witty and clever and quick ... they finally get a chance to express themselves when they get out of school. — Godfrey

The more my brain was fed, the hungrier it became. — Kevin DeYoung

I have always had a deep belief that every movie, every artistic expression, is political. Don't be fooled. Even ones that we wouldn't consider overtly political are political. When we spend time doing anything, whether it's distraction or whether it's something that we have to face, it is always political. That's my belief. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves. — Woody Allen

The travel writer Bruce Chatwin wrote that our nomadic past lives on in our need for distraction, our mania for the new. — Gloria Steinem

Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing. — Toni Morrison

The narrator refers to a character as an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them. — Pearl S. Buck

I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it. — Markus Zusak

Blind to all fault, destiny can be ruthless at one's slightest distraction. — Jorge Luis Borges

He left in a state of distraction and a winter coat. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Not only are you my distraction, Tessnia, but you are my heart as well. — Jalpa Williby

She was his distraction. He, her desire. — Kizzie Darker

Anything that we do to make ourselves feel worthy and safe is a flight from the pain of powerlessness. Every pursuit of external power - every attempt to change the world or a person in order to make yourself feel valuable and safe - is a distraction from the pain of powerlessness. — Gary Zukav

When you ought to be working on your computer, you are only ever one or two clicks away from checking out your friends on Facebook or welcoming a few minutes of mindless entertainment on YouTube. Text messages provide a welcome distraction from deep thinking, and binge watching the latest series on Netflix can set you back a week. You are surrounded by temptations to laziness and may succumb far more often than you think. — Tim Challies

There will be many times in your lives
at school, and more particularly when you are a grown up
when people will distract or divert you from what needs to be done. You may even welcome the distraction. But if you use it as an excuse for not doing what you suppose to do, you can blame no one but yourself. If you truly wish to accomplish something, you should allow nothing to stop you, and chances are you'll succeed. — Julie Andrews Edwards

thoroughly focused on heaven that anything to do with the present creation is regarded as worldly, dangerous, a distraction from the task of saving . . . but saving what? Well, often it is saving souls. But there's nothing about souls in Romans 8. No mention of heaven, either, if it comes to that. It is all about bodies: resurrection bodies, because that's what we will need in the new creation, which will be more physical than the present world, not less. — N. T. Wright

I'm concerned that Islam has not just been politicised but that it's becoming an identity. This is like turning religion into a football match; it's a distraction from the real thing. — Leila Aboulela

For once he didn't stop himself. The pressure of song was too strong, the need for distraction too great. Then he found that the music caged behind his closed teeth was the melody Kestrel had played for him months ago. He felt the sensation of it, low and alive on his mouth.
For a moment, he imagine it wasn't the melody that touched his lips, but Kestrel. — Marie Rutkoski

You're playing a character in a drama who happens to be based on someone who existed. It's never going to 'be' that person, but it's based on someone well-known, and you want to create enough of that person for it not to be a distraction. — Toby Jones

When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation. — Ramana Maharshi

I needed a distraction. A drink, a good tumble, anything - even this sure-to-be- trouble punk show. — Alexandra Martin

But, if we let it, technology can also add a lot of noise and distraction that get in the way of our most fundamental creative capabilities - instead of freeing us, it can consume us. What — Arianna Huffington

I've been thinking about what this would be like, too. Ever since that night I almost kissed you on the beach back in June. Say you're right. Say I can have any woman I want. The woman I want is you. Because you're perky and fun. Because you're adorable and you make me laugh all the time. And because you're far more beautiful than you give yourself credit for. I want you, Trina. You've got adaptability and smarts that can't be measured by essays and bubbled answer sheets. I don't want a distraction. I don't want a random hook-up. I want you. — Christi Barth

The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd. — Peter Kreeft

I can't talk about my childhood at all, because cannot say "I" when I mean "we," and if I say "we" it leads to a conversation about how I have a dead sister, instead of what I want to talk about. I found that out in the summer. So I don't talk about it. — Jo Walton

Do not watch TV aimlessly. Do not go on social media aimlessly. Always be aware of what you are doing, and why you are doing it. Don't value TV less. Value it more. Then you will watch it less. Unchecked distractions will lead you to distraction. — Matt Haig

One man's distraction is another man's refuge. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Not one word about proposals, no matter how much she pushes," I told my friends. "No matter what she says or how loud she cries, don't try to throw that up as a distraction."
Gabriel's lips twitched. "I don't think it's going to be that bad. It's one woman against five supernatural creatures ... And Zeb."
"You laugh because you haven't heard my mother's thirty-minute verbal dissertation on appropriate seasonal flower choices. We're better off letting her yell at us for being dirty, premarital fornicators. — Molly Harper

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams. — James Hampton

If you just focus on the trees swaying outside the window without distraction, you will see your true face. — Sam Harris

The simple rhythms of nature are calling you. Let them wash away the clutter and distractions from your false life. — Bryant McGill

Criminality was so widespread that its practitioners split into fields of specialization. Some became coney catchers, or swindlers (a coney was a rabbit reared for the table and thus unsuspectingly tame); others became foists (pickpockets), nips, or nippers (cutpurses), hookers (who snatched desirables through open windows with hooks), abtams (who feigned lunacy to provide a distraction), whipjacks, fingerers, cross biters, cozeners, courtesy men, and many more. Brawls were shockingly common. — Bill Bryson

I hold to fiction as a cure, or partial cure, or cause for hope, or essential distraction from the rain you wake up to, the doubts in your head, the daily desolation that you have not yet said what is most true, you have not yet crafted the story that reveals you. And therefore something waits. Therefore you must wake and you must write and you are not alone.
Your fiction is with you. — Beth Kephart

I'm painting so much that I don't listen to much music. Because music is another creative outlet, it's a huge distraction for me when I paint. — Chris Mars